Southern "ideology" remained "static" and "precapitalist"; as in other "pre-competitive" and "traditional" societies, "tradition was in itself a value." A large part of the race problem could be solved simply by "getting the Negro out of the stagnating rural South."

Myrdal drew heavily on W. J. Cash's recent book, The Mind of the South, which argued that the South was a "stubbornly lagging frontier society," in Myrdal's words, "with a strong paternalistic tinge inherited from the old plantation and slavery system." Cash, a protégé of Mencken, adopted a tone of cynical contempt in writing about his native region. Like Mencken, he tried to explode the South's aristocratic pretensions, and Myrdal took over much of his analysis, tracing the race problem to the frontier legacy of lawless individualism and to the "puritanical morality" that gave rise to an "obsession with sex" and sexual purity among the "frustrated lower strata of Southern whites." Drawing also on the work of John Dollard and other social psychologists, Myrdal attributed aggression to frustration (sexual frustration in particular), to the "narrow‐ minded and intolerant, 'fundamentalist' type of Protestant evangelical religion," and to the "dullness of everyday life and the general boredom of rural and small town life in the South." The "inertia and puritanical morality of the masses" stood in the way of needed reforms, including an "extreme birth control program" that could help to alleviate the region's poverty.

Noting that black people were no more receptive to birth control than poor whites, Myrdal painted a picture of black culture in the South almost as unflattering as his picture of the Southern redneck. Blacks were too much absorbed in religion, he thought. Their churches encouraged an "other-worldly outlook," a helpless "fatalism" in the face of oppression. Fortunately "shouting and noisy religious hysteria in old-time Negro churches" were on the decline. The influence of black fundamentalism lingered, however, retarding the development of a secular point of view. Southern blacks were liberal only on the race question; in other respects they remained unenlightened.

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impressive, in their eyes, than its economic underdevelopment or its lack of art galleries and concert halls.

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